SAMANTHA Mumba has opened up about her meteoric rise to fame worldwide and where it “went wrong”.
The singer was a huge hit back in the 2000s after releasing her singles, Gotta Tell You and Baby Come Over, which soared high in the charts
Samantha was on Nicky Byrne‘s podcast, where she opened up about growing up on Dublin’s Northside.
The now 41-year-old grew up “less than a minute walk” from Croke Park and Nicky asked her if she experienced much racism growing up as a mixed-race girl in the 80s.
Samantha went to an all girls primary school, unlike her brother and explained: “I think girls are a lot sweeter and kinder than boys. I think my brother would have had very different experiences. My father definitely had very different experiences.
“I was either very lucky, or, you know, I was always well able to stand up for myself, but I genuinely didn’t encounter things like that.
“It is not lost on me that if I wasn’t known here or recognisable that I would be treated, and would have been treated slightly different as you know an adult and in my 20s, I would have been a very different experience factually I know that now.”
The Gotta Tell You singer shot to fame worldwide after the release of her first single under the management of Louis Walsh.
However, after the release of her first album and appearing in one Hollywood movie, much of the steam driving Samantha’s career seemed to disappear.
Nicky asked her: “Do people say, ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ I’m going to pose that qustion and I know it’s not gone wrong, but I understand why people ask, ‘Why you aren’t selling out arenas around the world’.”
Samantha said: “Definitely, and I do notice that a lot especially when I am at home as well, it’s like, ‘What happened you? What you are up to?’
“So to answer all that, I was signed to Polydor that was my label and then obviously after America, after Time Machine, after all that, and releasing my first album.
“I’d actually recorded nearly a full second album, I think with Polydor ad then it merged into Universal.”
She added: “It went from all these three or four labels merged into one, and that screwed me.
“Because no one knew what was going on. All of my core team that were there from day one were no longer there. So, it was just like, ‘What do we do with this now?’.”
‘RELIEF’
She explained: “Again political, I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus, there were several thing that could have been done differently, could have been done better, could have been fixed, but it didn’t happen.”
Despite never truly recapturing the success of her first single or album Samantha explained that she felt “relieved” after losing her record deal.
She said: “It had felt like I was on this hamster wheel, constantly, constantly and then I was twenty and I could buy a house, So I did, in Dublin.
“Like that was amazing and I was so so happy to do that and not for once be living out of a suitcase and actually be able to decorate my house and have friends come over, and that’s when my house got the name Club Mumba after my 21st birthday.
Samantha bought her house in Drumcondra, where Bertie Ahern, Nicky’s father in-law also eventually bought a home.
